“Oh.” Becky’s stare burned into the side of his face, until curls of smoke should’ve been rising from his damn beard. “That was nice of her.”
Dearborn wasn’t nice. But shewaskind. He couldn’t explain the difference to himself, and he definitely wasn’t going to try to explain it to his girlfriend. Who was, in fact,nice.
He liked that about her. Right?
In the end, they went to the movies instead of Ice Queen. And after a few weeks of dating, he rarely saw Dearborn anymore.
They’d been assigned different lunchtimes. No classes together either. Only homeroom. Her rusty Mercury Sable appeared in the school lot in September, so shared rides were out. And she didn’t seem to actively avoid him, but somehow, even in homeroom, she was never close to him and always busy.
Not because she was dating too. If his girlfriend was out of his league, Dearborn didn’t evenhavea league. She wasn’t playing. Didn’t want to play. Was friendly but distant with everyone. If Becky was a quilt, Dearborn was the moon, and you didn’t cuddle with the fucking moon.
Besides, she was too smart for everyone in their school, including him. If he’d have asked, she’d have said no, and he wouldn’t have blamed her. But her rejection would haveobliteratedhim. Not worth the risk.
He cared way too damn much about Molly Dearborn. Which meant her sudden aloofness blew. Then Karl’s mom got laid off from one of her jobs a couple weeks after Thanksgiving. He had to pick up more hours at the bakery, stopped getting enough sleep, and felt more zombie than human most days. Becky didn’t complain often about how little time they had together, but he wasn’t stupid. Her unhappiness wasn’t exactly subtle.
But talking about things like that? Didn’t come easy to him.
His parents had been working their asses off ever since he could remember. Sure, Mom and Dad loved him, but they were fuckingexhausted. Didn’t need to hear about hisemotionsor some stupid shit that didn’t matter in their fleeting, errand-packed time off. And dealing with his younger siblings’ problems was his damn job. Wasn’t theirs to deal with his crap.
No one outside his family wanted to hear about some grumpy bastard’s feelings either. He’d found that out real damn young, once a few of his dickwad classmates—the Whitley brothers, mostly—made fun of the husky kid who teared up and whined whenever they chose him last for kickball or square dancing or whatever.
It’d only taken a few shitty gym classes and recesses for him tolearn. He might’ve been big and cranky from birth, but he wasn’t slow. He’d stopped playing kickball, or any team sport. Toughened the hell up. Concentrated on helping his family instead of worrying about what random assholes thought. Instead of showing them he was worried, anyway.
So, yeah. He didn’t know how to deal with emotions. Not his own. Not other people’s.
Exhibit fucking A: When he told Becky he loved her, she didn’t say it back. He had no fucking clue why not, and her silence stung like hell, but he never said word one about it. Was too goddamn cowardly to ask for an explanation or even tell her she’d hurt him.
And now, he had no idea how to handle her pissiness about his schedule either. Didn’t know what to say, or how to raise the subject himself. So he didn’t do or say anything. Let her handle things however she wanted.
She broke up with him, then came back a week later. Broke up with him a second time. Came back two months later. On-again, off-again, ad fucking nauseam, all senior year.
In March, during one of those awful off-again periods, his homeroom teacher assigned the senior project to everyone. At first, he didn’t pay much attention. Too busy trying to look at Molly without getting caught.
She was sitting across the room, her head bent over the tattered paperback in her hands.
Shit, he missed her. Had no idea why. Not like they’d been that close, right?
“—pairings for the project,” Mrs. Beanly was saying. “Wade Adams and Adrienne Bronnell. Karl Dean and Molly Dearborn. Serena Frank and—”
Wait. Had the two of them been assigned together for their senior project?
He whispered to his neighbor, asking for clarification, and Ellen winced and rubbed at her ear before confirming that yes, he and Molly would be working as a team.
Alphabetization for the damn win!
He sat back in his too-small goddamn chair. Gloried in the first taste of victory he’d experienced in months. And agroup projectwas giving him that taste. Oh, the fucking irony.
Apparently, the senior project was due right before prom in late May. Before then, they’d need to volunteer somewhere for a set number of hours and create a written and videotaped presentation about their experiences. Which was going to be a huge pain in the ass, and he probably wouldn’t sleep much for the next two months, but whatever. He waspsyched.
He didn’t give a crap what he and Molly did for their project, as long as they did it together.
She was friendly but distant when they talked about the assignment. Exactly like she was with everyone else, but had never really been with him. It fuckingstung. But maybe this stupid project, this mandated time spent together, could change things. Bring them back to what they’d once been.
At Molly’s suggestion, they wound up volunteering at Historic Harlot’s Bay, and the next month and a half waspainful. Borrowing a camcorder from Matthew’s family for the express purpose of getting recorded while he hit a hoop with a stick in fuckingbreechesalmost killed him. Usingothersticks to stir linen shirts and shifts in a boiling-hot copper kettle over a goddamn fire sucked ass too. Every hour he spent with Dearborn at Historic Harlot’s Bay either subtracted from his paycheck or added to his growing sleep deficit.
But somehow, Dearborn’s company made everything fine. The itchy, starched stiffness of his linen shirts. The mocking comments from the junior interpreters as they whipped his butt at Mancala time after fucking time. The distinctthunksas Dearborn’s aggravatingly accurate pitches smacked his own lawn bowls farther away from the stupid jack.
As the weeks went by, she relaxed in his company. Talked to him. Even touched him.
